It‘s been
said time in and time out that ever since Goldeneye was released on
the N64, no other game based on the secret agent James Bond has been
able to even hold a candle up to the masterpiece that was
Goldeneye007. After the Bond license was sold to EA, they’ve never
really been able to release a James Bond game that could even
compete with Goldeneye Their most recent failure in most eyes, Agent
Under Fire, came out last year. Actually, there were mostly mixed
reactions about Agent Under Fire, some liked it, some didn’t. I was
one of those who didn’t, and I thought it was a disgrace.
Well,
I’ve always thought that anybody should have a second chance (for
some people it goes up to three or four or five). When things
started to surface about the next Bond game planned to coincide with
the release of the new Bond movie, (Die Another Day) I was actually
starting to warm up to EA, because Nightfire was looking mighty
fine.
p l o t /
s t o r y
Bad guy
wants to take over world. James Bond won’t let him. Bond has to save
world. Bond meets girl. Bond and girl meet bed. The world is a
better place. C’mon people, it’s James Bond, what kind of plot line
do you expect?
g a m e p
l a y
Considering the major fan base that Goldeneye had under its belt,
it’s kind of evident that a lot of people will relate any new James
Bond games to it, and usually nothing can compare. In Nightfire,
there are 13 missions that take you to different parts of the world
in order to restore peace to Earth from bad guys once again. One of
the weaknesses in every single James Bond game released after
Goldeneye is that there aren’t nearly as many missions as Goldeneye,
and none have yet to reach the caliber of Goldeneye, in that there
is an incredible amount of replay value.
Anyway,
completing each of the 13 missions will further your progress into
the “plot”, and depending on what you did during the mission, you’ll
receive a rating that rates your accuracy, the amount of stealth you
used, how many 007 “stunts” you pulled off, etc. EA (once again
trying to fill the giant boots left by Goldeneye) tried (keyword:
tried) to add a little bit of spice to the gameplay in Nightfire.
This was attempted by adding 007 “stunts”, or moves that would
mirror what James Bond would do in the movies (such as blowing up a
pair of barrels to blast away a bunch of guards). This would have
been a rather cool feature, had EA not made it part of the ranking
system (meaning you have to do a certain amount of them to get
perfect points for that part of the ranking), and had they not made
them so damn hard to figure out. I mean, you’d think that it’d be
easy to spot a situation that could be handled in a way that James
Bond would handle it himself… However a lot of times you’re forced
to search for that to happen, and so it makes getting a perfect
rating very hard to achieve.
Like in
Agent Under Fire, missions are balanced between controlling Bond
himself in the traditional Goldeneye retrospect, and controlling
some sort of vehicle so that Bond’s buns can get a little bit of
rest. In Nightfire the tried and true vehicle chases are a lot
better than those in Agent Under Fire, as EA had a couple of members
who worked on Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2’s car model’s and
physics. Both the control, look, and feel are all damn near perfect,
and the same great Bond gadgets built into the car are at your use
once again. The vehicle missions are really fun, however a sacrifice
was made in Nightfire: You can’t just switch between the different
weapons, gadgets, etc. that are in the vehicle. Instead you are
forced to use the specified weapon when they “say” to use it, stuff
like that. It’s a totally linear approach to the driving missions,
something that I enjoyed the most in AUF and I wish it had continued
in Nightfire, and it has; just not executed as well as I wanted it
to be. Also the enemies are a LOT easier to kill, and there’s really
no challenge to the driving missions.
You
really know that EA is desperate at getting new gameplay ideas when
there is a mission where Bond’s car turns into a submarine, and you
drive through an underwater mission after the first few missions.
This actually wasn’t that bad of an idea, but when I actually got to
the mission, trying to enjoy it was hard, to say the least.
Most of
the missions aren’t that long, but each one is broken into parts.
You’ll receive your objectives either when you get to a certain part
(the loading screen comes up showing your next objective) or you
pass a certain point in the mission (your objective will come up on
the screen). Mission objectives range in difficulty level from easy
as taking candy from the candy dish, to moderately difficult where
you might have to redo that part of the mission once or twice to get
past it.
The AI
difficulty of the enemies usually rises from mission to mission
(sounds about right don’t it? It’d be kind of weird it everything
started out hard and got easy...oh wait, a few RPG’s are like that,
hmm...), and once again you have the option of choosing three
different agent types which make the game a little bit harder for
each agent type (there are three, sort of like the Agent, Secret
Agent, and 00 Agent in Goldeneye). Even if you’re on the hardest
difficulty level, most of the levels are very easy and I’ve yet to
encounter any kind of mobs where I’m surrounded with constant
gunfire like in Goldeneye (Facility). There are also no “bosses”
that have any kind of difficulty to beat (like Xenia from “Jungle”
in Goldeneye).
It’s not
likely that the secret agent man would go anywhere un-armed, so
thankfully you’ll be equipped and have the chance to equip a variety
of different weapons, including gadgets from Q that are actually
useful this time around (they got used maybe once or twice in AUF).
Many of the weapons have returned like Bond’s trademark handgun
along with the silencer, an assault rifle, the Finessi Shotgun
(still my favorite weapon in any game that has guns), and there are
also two new sniper guns, one that’s silenced and one that’s not.
When getting in a firefight that involves more than just you and
another person, your weapon will fly back in the screen, (depending
on your weapon’s recoil) causing you to not be able to see what
you’re doing. This creates a greater risk of getting killed because
you can’t see what’s going on. The heaviest recoil on any of the
weapons was that of the Shotgun, and it has caused me many deaths. I
fire and I can’t see anything in front of me because the damn recoil
kicks the gun back where I am damn well blind to who I’m shooting
at, or who I’m getting shot by and from where. When you’re out in a
more open space while this happens, it’s not that bad. When you’re
in close quarters such as a Japanese penthouse, it’s almost
impossible to see what you’re doing while you’re shooting.
You are
encouraged to be Sam Fischer or Solid Snake and hold stealth as your
strongest ally, but it’s almost impossible to NOT stir up any kind
of action in any of the missions. The stealth rating you get after
completing a mission is a bunch of bologna.
Goldeneye
didn’t just jump to success by means of the single-player alone.
Yes, it was fun, but the multi-player is what lured everyone in to
play. I remember many a time ago when I would play almost non-stop
at friends houses, taking turns spending the night, staying up all
night drinking Mt. Dew and eating cookies, popcorn, etc.; ALL
because of the massive multiplayer. In Nightfire, as you complete
missions and get higher ratings, you’ll unlock special bonuses in
the multi-player such as maps, characters, weapons, and game types,
but the multiplayer still falls short because of a lack of any kind
of incentive to continue playing. The game types are boring as all
get out, and you might be able to stand a round or two with one of
your friends, but that’s it.
g r a p h
i c s
There is
a nice thing to say about EA’s third official attempt to propel
James Bond to higher proportions: (Die Another Day was a Playstation
exclusive and sucked too, so I don’t count that as an “official”
game in the Bond series) and that is that the graphics are slightly
better than they were in Agent Under Fire. The character and
environment models consist of higher polygon counts than in AUF,
however other than some smoother character/environment and weapon
models, everything still looks the same as last year with fuzzy
looking textures and pop-ups all over the place, and the frame rate
still hasn’t been fixed to accommodate another year of time to fix
bugs in the predecessor.
I surely
wasn’t expecting Xbox caliber graphics (hey, even the Xbox version
sucks a bit), nor was I expecting anything Halo or Splinter cell -ish,
but damn EA... they’ve had a year to fix everything, and yet the
frame rate problems still cease to stop, and now there are other
little problems such as minor pop-ups in the backgrounds.
s o u n d
Surprisingly enough, EA took a step forward in at least one
department (they certainly as hell didn’t improve in the visuals
much), as the audio really captures the James Bond “scene”,
especially since EA got the secret agent man himself (Pierce Brosnan)
to do the voice acting for James Bond this time around. Now I’m not
complaining, but I would have MUCH rather have had Sean Connery come
in and voice James Bond’s character, because I still think that Sean
Connery rules over all of the James Bond actors.
The music
also captures the James Bond essence in that right from the get-go
of the game, it starts out like the movies do, in that the trademark
of Bond walking out into the middle of a scope and shooting the
screen, causing blood to fall down the screen, and then it moves to
the beginning of the movie. There’s always a fairly hot action scene
that’s happening, and after about 5-10 minutes of the intro, up
comes the theme song with the pretty naked ladies dancing to some
cool music (A View To A Kill’s theme song is my favorite in case
you’re wondering). The always annoying, but addicting James Bond
tune still gets cemented into your head, once again causing you to
find yourself humming it almost everywhere you go, even in your
sleep (hey, I woke up doing it one time, weird? yes).
o v e r a
l l
James
Bond 007: Nightfire is by no means a bad game, nor is it a great
game. It’s a very mediocre title that was released during a strong
flow of game releases, but in the James Bond world Nightfire is
above average; better than AUF, but still not as good as Goldeneye.
Nightfire was released across all 3 platforms (GC, PS2, Xbox), and
they’re all identical in almost every way except that the GC
version’s frame rate stays at a higher pace and the graphics are a
bit smoother than the PS2, and the Xbox controls are a little more
fitting. No matter which console you own, Nightfire is a definite
rental (as you can get a full week’s enjoyment out of it) because
the single-player is short, and the multi-player still sucks.
